Colorado Springs Utilities pledged Wednesday to take a hard look at options to decommission the decades-old Martin Drake Power Plant in southwest downtown.

“We’re going to begin in earnest,” Utilities CEO Jerry Forte told the Utilities Board.

“We’ve already scoped out a lot of the different requirements of this,” he said. “We’re looking at lots of alternatives, and we’ll be bringing facts and logic, we hope, to the conversation so you can be in the position with community input to make the best decision for the future of this community.”

The City Council, meeting as the Utilities Board on Wednesday, asked the city-owned utility company to slow spending at Drake, including on promising new technology designed to remove emissions from the coal-fired power plant.

The technology, invented by physicist and entrepreneur David Neumann of Colorado Springs, removes sulfur dioxide. Utilities has spent tens of millions of dollars on the invention and planned to spend an additional $90 million in coming years.

“Let’s make sure we’re spending it in the right place,” said Councilman Tim Leigh, who proposed cutting spending. “Is there a way to drag our feet a little bit?”

Forte said Utilities could scale back expenditures.

“If we run into big ticket items, we’re going to get back to you immediately,” he said.

Bruce McCormick, Utilities’ chief energy services officer, said Utilities decided to invest in the so-called scrubbers several years ago because “this was the right technology to meet regulations.”

“We still believe that’s the case,” he said. “But if the community says we want to look at something different for downtown, we’re certainly open to looking at those options.”

Utilities did not initiate the discussion about decommissioning the downtown power plant. Councilwoman Lisa Czelatdko, who represents downtown, asked Utilities to look at the possibility of retiring the plant last month. Also, the idea, part of a larger effort to revitalize downtown, has the support of downtown business leaders and Mayor Steve Bach. He wants to replace the plant with a baseball stadium for the Sky Sox minor league team.

“It’s a visionary approach to downtown,” Councilwoman Brandy Williams said.“It’s a way to kick off that renaissance. I think it would be an amazing catalyst,” she said.

Council President Scott Hente said the power plant has served Colorado Springs well.

In an interview last week, Hente said the city shouldn’t rush into a decision.

“Our community wants a lot of electrons, and they want them really cheap, and Drake does that today,” he said. “It’s not the most attractive thing when you drive through Colorado Springs, but we didn’t put it there yesterday, and it works well.”

Forte said it was “amazing” that Colorado Springs has the opportunity to make such a decision, but only because “we have local control and ownership” of the utility.

“That’s a really, really exciting place for Colorado Springs to be,” he said.

“We’re not having to go up to Minneapolis to get a decision hopefully out of somebody,” he said, referring Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, which called the mayor to express an interest in buying the utility’s electric generating capacity.

“We can make that decision. You make that decision,” Forte told the board, which oversees the billion-dollar-plus enterprise of the city.